Communique of the Committee against the Propaganda and Campaign for Vietnamese Communists in San Jose City College

Communique of the Committee against the Propaganda and Campaign for Vietnamese Communists in San Jose City College
San Jose, November 1, 2006

SJCC is realizing its initiative of “educational exchange” with Vietnamese communists known by the name of Global Education Opportunities (GEO).

Overview of GEO Initiative
SJCC began to realize this initiative by taking 14 American students of Vietnamese descent and 2 teachers to Vietnam to study Vietnamese language. This Fall semester, SJCC opened “The Politics, Culture and Society of Vietnam” and other classes.

Tran Khang Thuy, permanent vice president of the University of Economics in HoChiMinh City came to SJCC to visit and “pledged to realize the exchange program”, according to preliminary discussions with Dr. Chui Tsang, former President of SJCC who went to Vietnam in the year 2001.

Fall Semester 2003, undersecretary in charge of Technology Studies of the Vietnamese Communists invited the delegation from SJCC to Vietnam. The College District Foundation funded this trip to VN for 4 people: Dr. Chui, Mai-Huong Ho Le, Dr. Nancy Wolfe and one person representing SJSU, Savander Parker, in order to meet with 4 different universities. They met with Dr. Do Van Loc, undersecretary of Technology, and his staff in order to establish “mutual trust.”

Fall Semester 2004, Dr. Loc, along with a delegation of 7 people including members of the government and representatives of a number of universities (of the Vietnamese communists) came to visit City College.

In order to campaign in the local Vietnamese community for support of the plan, the initiative, while in the process of suggesting ways to raise funds, wrote: “We advertise this program in Vietnam and in the Vietnamese community in the County of Santa Clara in the Viet Mercury and numerous Vietnamese-language media organizations.”

Because the participation of the community is a condition of granting expenditures, the initiative repeated the support of the Vietnamese community as follows:

“Our contact office will utilize all methods of communication media to reach Americans of Vietnamese ancestry (newspapers, TV and websites) to advertise the program.”

The Vietnamese communists accepted the suggestion:
“All interested and related agencies in Vietnam agree with the principle of sending officials with political power, professors, and other people to our schools to study intensive courses in English language, technology, business, and culture.”

The plan provides for sending a delegation of teachers and students to VN in Dec. 2005 or the beginning of 2006.
We have discussed with the VN side regarding establishing a type of sister college equivalent with our community college. This will be an exemplary college to set up a high level college system in order to satisfy the requirements for study in a university.

At SJCC, the initiative will:

1. Expand the Vietnamese language program to include the VN war, Vietnamese Literature, and the history of VN. Because “there are people who are interested in the war (VN) from different positions and who possibly want to re-examine their views to expand and reconsider their knowledge.” The initiative provides an opportunity for them to understand the problem.

2. Organize conferences for professors of related fields, with 8 discussion forums on history, economics, political systems, technology, etc. with academics from Stanford, Berkeley, Vietnamese people from Santa Clara, artists, etc. to help change the content of the teaching and training program. “We rely heavily on the professors, employees, including community representatives and corresponding members to contact the rank and file in Vietnam to establish this teaching program.

The Vietnamese people who have their names listed in this initiative are: Mai-Huong Ho Le, Vu Duc Vuong, Dorian Tran, Bui Tuan, and Do Dan.

Funding for 2 semesters from Title III and V (Federal) and “extra contributions” will provide for and be distributed as follows:

Objective II
-advertising, outreach, recruiting students from VN to come to SJCC: $76,000
-establishing, advertising, organizing a semester of study abroad: $68,000

Objective III
-establish, advertise, request approval of classes on Vietnamese culture and the
VN war, history of VN and political science: $46,000
-8 sessions of seminars/forums: establishing and advertising of them: $33,000

POSITION OF THE COMMITTEE AGAINST PROPAGANDA IN RESPONSE TO THIS INITIATIVE:

1. 14 students have already been taken to VN to study Vietnamese language this past May. The class started May 23 and lasted for 10 days. Later the students were taken to visit several cultural and historic establishments. This class was taught at the Commission for Vietnamese People Overseas at 32 Ba Trieu Street in Hanoi.

This Commission is the instigating organization of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs that has the task of propaganda, campaigning and keeping under control refugees. This commission is NOT an educational institution and has NO relation to the teaching of the Vietnamese language.

Why did SJCC let students study at a propaganda agency? SJCC MUST answer this question clearly.

2. The duty or function of a community college is:

a. provide training to local residents in order for them to have the opportunity for promotion and adapt themselves to scientific and technological advances so that they can carefully reach a most timely ability in order to enter and join the labor market or workforce.
b. Provide workers who have basic and specialized knowledge the stability for local enterprises.

Why did SJCC establish this plan for a country’s people who are NOT local residents?

3. budget: Expenses of the various above-mentioned objectives of the initiative are $190,000 in order to establish, advertise, recruit international students (in this case from communist VN) to America constitutes misuse of taxpayers’ money to serve those outside the state, rather than for serve the local community.

4. advertising and organizing 8 seminars of related fields for various academics, each session of discussion will comprise of 75 persons. With the ultimate purpose of guiding students to VN and helping faculty change the content of their teaching materials. Spending $33,000 for this objective is not only irrational, but also contributes to distortion of the facts of the cultural history of the Vietnamese people.

Not a single refugee who escaped from the communist regime can even accept this fact.

5. Bring members of the Vietnamese Communist political power structure, professors and other people to SJCC. They are foreigners (in this case VN communists). Why did SJCC spend the money to do this? Why doesn’t the Vietnamese communists government spend the money instead of SJCC having to spend tax dollars of the people to spend on the Vietnamese communists?
6. The issue of professors, employees and corresponding members who have contacted Communist VN to establish the training program.
They have already met and asked the Dean of Social Science and Humanities of Hanoi, etc. to provide materials and ideas regarding the program, the content of teaching materials, and pedagogy,…

The community college is to serve the local community. Why wasn’t the local community invited to give input into the program and content of the teaching materials instead of contacting the communists in VN in this matter?

The right to give input to establish course subjects, content of subject areas must NOT be denied or rejected. The important point that must be paid attention to is that the program curriculum and educational content of the subject areas of history, literature, and perspectives of the VN war of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam is based on the ideology of Marxism and Lenin. With this ideology, the Vietnamese communists can change the history of the Vietnamese people, denying the value of freedom, denying the respect for diversity, values that Vietnamese refugees have sought after. Because of that, the content of the materials on the war, on history and on culture are being distorted in one direction.

On the other hand, establishing this type of program at SJCC is a conspiracy to plant a bastardized ideology in the minds of the children of Vietnamese refugees.

A meeting of a number of local individuals and organizations was called in SJ on the afternoon of this past Wednesday Oct. 25 to establish an organization called:

The Committee Against Propaganda and Campaigning for Vietnamese Communists

in order to address this SJCC initiative.

And the Committee has decided the following:

1. Send an official letter, with signatures of 18 representatives, to Ms. Rosa Perez, Chancellor of SJ/ECCD to request a meeting with a delegation for her to explain the reason why the district is doing this. The delegation will be limited to 20 people and will be under the leadership of former Brigadier-General Nguyen Khac Binh.

The delegation has been invited to SJCC on 11/7 at 1 p.m.

On this occasion, the delegation will request cancellation of this initiative based on the above-mentioned reasons.

2. If the college district does not give up the program, the Committee will appeal to the refugee community to stand up and:

a. mobilize 1500 students from refugee families to boycott City College by going on strike, not attending classes, and calling meetings, etc. Most of these students are the children of Vietnamese refugees.
b. Demonstrate against SJCC and denounce and accuse at a public forum that the college district is working on propaganda for non-Californians (in this case Vietnamese Communists) instead of being a legitimate educational institution.
3. Possibly use the rights as taxpayers to request that the agency that provides funding (The Federal Government grants money according to Title III and V)
RE-EXAMINE having granted money to fund a program that does not have the intended purpose and that there is a discrepancy that goes against the energy and zeal of the refugee community.

As for the responsible parties at SJCC, there are at least three are 2 trustees: Randy Okamura and Richard Hobbs of the Board of Trustees, Chancellor Rosa Perez, former president of SJCC Chui Tsang, other individuals named in the initiative and a number of people outside the initiative who have helped SJCC. These people must answer why to:

1. falsely claiming people’s tax money and profiting under the guise of the “exchange” program to serve non-Californians (in this case Vietnamese Communists). In fact, the initiative states, “utilize local Vietnamese language newspapers, radio, TV to advertise this program” to the refugee community.

The initiative has named Viet Mercury. Actually, we have NOT seen a single announcement in that publication. And we are opposed to this type of deceit.

2. knowingly and intentionally using people’s tax dollars not in accordance with the objectives. This constitutes fraud.

In an e-mail dated 9/12/06 in reply to the Vietnamese faculty and staff of the district regarding this initiative, Ms. Perez said:

“WE DO NOT YET HAVE A PLAN.”

With the plan already having been realized as mentioned above for a long time, Ms. Perez already knew and LIED to hide the truth and must be held responsible and answer to this deception.

The committee is not ruling out a LEGAL solution. All those who have participated in this conspiracy MUST answer before justice, even those who have stopped working on it. And we ask that they be held individually responsible in this matter.

The position of the Committee is that anyone who comes to American to study must pay their own tuition and housing costs. We cannot use the public coffers-which are tax dollars from our contributions as stated above-to serve foreigners (this case being Vietnamese communists). We children of Vietnamese refugees who go to school must also pay those same fees. We cannot be discriminated against.

Spokesperson: Nguyen Tam, Attorney-at-Law
Professor Nguyen Van Canh, Advisor
Former Brigadier-General Nguyen Khac Binh, Advisor